Vehicles for the road, such as passenger cars, trucks and vans, are designed to provide various amounts of information to the operator. Most vehicles have an instrument cluster that includes instruments or depictions of instruments and information such as: speedometer, tachometer, coolant and oil temperature, oil pressure, fuel, electrical system gages, gear selection, lateral acceleration, and the like positioned within view of the operator behind the steering wheel. In this position, the operator is able to observe the instruments during most driving activity.
As steering wheels are designed to include various interfaces, e.g., switches, to allow the operator to control any number of vehicle systems without removing their hands from the steering wheel, to incorporate airbag restraint systems, and to have larger rims for a more comfortable grip, the opening designed into the steering wheel to permit viewing of the instrument cluster is reduced. Moreover, during turns, the opening may be poorly positioned to permit viewing of the instrument cluster. As much as fifty-percent (50%) of the instrument cluster may be obscured as often as forty-seven percent (47%) of the time during normal driving.
While the amount of time the steering wheel might obscure the instrument cluster can be brief, during performance driving activities such as high performance driving education (HPDE) it is important to have vehicle operating information available to the operator and often precisely when the steering wheel is obscuring the instrument cluster. During autonomous vehicle operation information and indications of autonomous vehicle operation status needs to be viewable by the operator under all conditions.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide within a vehicle an instrument cluster that reduces the likelihood of being obscured by the steering wheel during vehicle operation. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the devices, systems and methods of the herein described exemplary embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.